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You're about to embark on the marketing trip of a lifetime -- building your company's new website. It's a big deal -- and not just because you finally get to show off your marketing and tech smarts. You'll also demonstrate your leadership, communication and project management skills -- and zip off into the sunset as the new company hero.

You think you know what’s best for your customers. It’s your business.

I think I know what’s best for your customers. I’m a marketing professional.

But until we ask your customers what they want, neither of us knows for certain. We can only make educated guesses. That’s why it’s critical to conduct user testing before you redesign your website.

User testing helps determine the ease with which visitors are able to use your website – and your competitors’. You learn what works well (keep it) and what doesn’t (dump it). You also learn what works well on competitor websites (borrow it) and what doesn’t (avoid it).

Video can be a compelling, informative and entertaining way to present your company, brand, and product. But how do you start? What does it take? How do you get from idea to finished product?

Inbound marketing is like your great grandmother’s recipe for layered chocolate fudge cake. It’s rich. It’s satisfying. And you don’t feel complete without it.   

It’s the same for inbound marketing; your business isn’t complete without it. Inbound marketing – or Internet marketing – is a strategy of offering useful content and engaging with your prospective clients to generate leads.  

Your great grandmother made it look easy. You can make it look easy too. Here’s the recipe.  

We have entered the Image Age; pure content without pretty pictures is is no longer an option. To remain relevant, your websites must have good form and good content, no exceptions. Pinterest is an example of the current shift toward visual media.

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 … blast off.

A B2B product launch isn’t rocket science. But there is a science to it.

Your marketing campaign can be the difference between mission accomplished and failure to launch.

Here’s how to prepare for marketing your B2B product launch.

Step 1. Determine your goals, and when and how you will measure them.

What are you trying to achieve? Is your goal a dollar amount, units sold, awareness or qualified leads? How and how often will you measure your progress?

Step 2. Make a list of ALL of your audiences.

How will you educate and motivate each audience? Download the free Product Launch Workbook for examples of audiences and ways to educate and motivate them.

Suddenly, it hits you: you need to redesign your website.

You have two options. You can give your existing website a facelift and hope it’s effective. After all, it worked well for you years ago … right?

Or you can invest a little extra time and money on the following research, ensuring your website is as effective as your budget allows.

“Does our project need a microsite?” It’s one of the questions that our B2B clients ask most. Our answer: “It depends.”

The microsite can be mightier than the website. But it’s not right for every marketing situation.

Before we share the right time to create a microsite, let’s discuss what a microsite is. A microsite is just like it sounds – a small website. It may be a single landing page or several pages.

Think of it this way. You go out to eat. The waiter or waitress hands you a menu. The menu is like a website – an exhaustive list of everything available. Like a website, the menu might have an “about” section – perhaps the history of the restaurant or the philosophy of the chef.

Sitting at the head of the table or stuffed inside the menu is a promotional piece. It might be a single page with tonight’s special or a short booklet with featured items (for example, it’s cod month featuring a beer-battered cod sandwich, center-cut cod strips and a cod platter). The promotional piece is like a microsite. Here’s why:

R.F.P. For marketers and web design firms alike, this stands for Really Frustrating Process. It can take weeks to write an RFP. And even longer for firms to respond.

At the end of the process, you may end up more confused than when you started. You’ll start to realize that as you meet with the finalist agencies, your decision comes down to a “gut feeling,” an amazing portfolio, a smart process or killer ideas – and has little to do with anything you put down in your original RFP.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

You can get to your “aha, I found the right agency” moment faster than you think. In fact, you can write your RFP in 1 hour or less – if you write an RFQ.
RFQ stands for Request for Qualifications. And we can assure you that qualifications are MUCH more important than your typical RFP specifications. Here’s why: